Surviving Frozen Fever
by Bart Hibbs
Summary: Frozen Fever adds new canon to the world of Frozen. How well do your stories survive the new material? How well do my stories survive?


When I wrote my first story, Rain of a Child's Tear, I decided to take the movie Frozen as canon. I set the start of my story about two and one half months after the end of the movie. I am also half way though writing a second story (Summer of Ice) that fills in the back-story of my first. The new one covers the period from the end of the movie and, and the beginning of Rain.

Then came Frozen Fever. It is set one or two months after Frozen, and hence takes place between the movie and my first story, and right in the idle of my second. It also adds new canon. How do my stories fare? Do they survive Frozen Fever? If I want to update my stories so they do not violate the new canon, what changes would be needed?

I looked at six areas.

1) Elsa's use of her Power. I'm good here. In both my stories and Frozen Fever, Elsa is confidant in her power, and shows no qualms about using it. I see no reason to make any changes.

2) Clothing. I have a couple of issues. In my stories, Elsa never makes anything other than the blue-white ice gown shown in Frozen. The only variation is once I have her make a short train, for convenience. I do have her wear conventional clothing many times, again for convenience, or to dress for the occasion.

I also never have her make clothing for others. If fact, I have Elsa state that if she tries to take off an ice gown and save it, the gown falls apart. The idea I am working with is that contact with Elsa is needed for her Power to sustain the ice.

I think I could fix this issue with a few well-placed changes.

3) Snowgies. I have nothing like these… entities. I do not intend to add them. I noticed that, at the end of Frozen Fever, Disney decided to move them to a location where the Snowgies could be ignored in any future movie. I can assume the same.

4) Geography. Here I am not too far off. In Frozen Fever, a map is shown of Arendelle and the surrounding areas, including the Southern Isles. (If you search for "Frozen Fever map", you will find it.) When you see the map, one thing to note is "north" is to the left. That is, the compass rose is rotated 90 degrees from convention, and east is at the top. Older maps actually do this rather often; the convention of always having north at the top of a map is a modern one.

That map shows the fjord runs mostly north south, with the seaward opening angled to the southwest. A drawing of the castle shows it is on the eastern side of the fjord. If you walked along the causeway toward the castle, you would be walking west.

There is a problem with these directions. As part of my research for my first story, I tried to determine various directions by looking at shadows in Frozen. During the segment just before "A first time in Forever" there is a scene where we are looking along the causeway, toward the castle. In that shot, the sun is coming from the right, and a little from behind. If the causeway leads west, that would put the sun in the north-northeast.

In the northern summer, that is a possible sun direction. The "midnight sun" comes directly from the north. But it does imply Arendelle is quite far north. It wound need to be close to, or inside the Arctic Circle. It also implies that the village is bustling with activity at two in the morning.

A better resolution is to assume the drawing of the castle in the Frozen Fever map is representative of the castle location, but not its orientation. If the coastline ran northeast to southwest in that area, then the castle causeway would go to the northwest. The sun position, during the above scene, would be in the east-northeast, a reasonable location for a northern morning, around 5 AM. The drawing of the castle on the map is large enough to cover such a jog in the coastline.

One other map is available to us: The map to the trolls shown in Frozen. It too has a compass rose. One arm of the rose is labeled with an "N" and another with a "W". However, these two symbols are runes, and it is not clear they are supposed to represent north and west. But if we make the assumption that they do represent those directions, then that map also has the shoreline running northeast to southwest, and the castle causeway running northwest. The two maps become consistent, and consistent with the shadows shown in the movie.

In my story I have the causeway running to the north. It would not be hard to make some small changes to fix it. I also have a chapter titled "The Eastern Plains". Fortunately, based on the map in Frozen Fever, there are plains to the east of Arendelle.

5) Prince Hans. Here I line up fairly well with Frozen Fever. In my story, I assumed the Southern Isles did not sanction Hans' actions. They took a very dim view of what he did, and put him in jail. In Frozen fever, Hans is shown in dirty clothing, and working in a pigsty, as though he no longer has any royal standing. My story works just fine if we assume the Southern Isles runs a prison farm. I could add something to better reference Frozen Fever.

6) The ice palace. Here I have the biggest issue. In my story, the ice palace is slowly collapsing, and Marshmallow has abandoned it. Ice is a weak material, and cannot possibly support all the structures Elsa made. I assumed it stayed intact as long as she was in it, with her Power supporting it. Once she left, decay began. This gave me a reason for her to build a second palace, and that new one figures prominently in several chapters.

In Frozen Fever, the ice palace is in fine condition, and Marshmallow is still there. (Although he was not shown wearing Elsa's crown.)

Modifying my story to account for an intact ice palace would be a pain. Many, many changes would be needed, and those changes are to parts of the story I like.

Of course, I don't have to make any changes. The only reason I am considering making changes is that one of my original objectives in writing the story was to stay true to movie canon. I set it as sort of a goal, or a challenge. Now I have to choose to try to remain true to that goal, or just say, "good enough, works with the first movie, lets move on".

How well does your story survive Frozen Fever?


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